Abstract
The objective of a current design science research (DSR) undertaking is responding to the call for a decentralizing Knowledge Management (KM) revolution by conceptualizing a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system. The rationale is rooted in today’s accelerating information abundance and lack of adequate tools which signify—in the author’s view—the presently emerging and most crucial barriers to individual and collective development. For validation, it employs prototyping and verifies its design decisions against DSR guidelines and KM-related methodologies and practices. For the latter purpose, this article employs the SVIDT methodology (Strengths, Vulnerability, and Intervention Assessment related to Digital Threats) by adopting a hindsight reverse-engineered logical perspective in order to present the line of reasoning from the proposed technologies back to the underlying motivations. Its focus is the sustainability of PKM systems, processes, and outcomes combined with SVIDT’s concerns with goals and environments, actors and affiliations, strengths and weaknesses, threat and intervention scenarios, and synergies and strategies. In following the SVIDT’s nine steps, the broad span of the Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) concept’s “wicked” problem space is presented. The results reaffirm the DSR concept of theory effectiveness in terms of the system’s utility and communication, and present the PKM concept and system as sustainable interventions to confront opportunity divides independent of space (e.g., developed/developing countries), time (e.g., study or career phase), discipline (e.g., natural or social science), or role (e.g., student, professional, or leader).
Highlights
Over the past five years, the objective of a Design Science Research (DSR) undertaking is to develop a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) concept supported by a prototype
In this PKM System (PKMS) context, the SVIDT methodology was not applied for its forward-looking analysis and planning strengths, but has been tasked in retrospect, to reflect on and further validate the “Theory Effectiveness” in a reverse-engineered manner from the proposed PKMS solution back to the initial needs assessment
Database, and hosting platforms have provided a viable opportunity for innovation and for developing PKMS applications serving and educating a wider audience and for presenting knowledge workers with affordances and support services currently not catered for, as, for example, the “Six Vital PKMS Provisions” (Figure 3)
Summary
In “What the Digital Revolution Means for Us” [32], Helbing sees the only viable alternative as “creating resilient social and economic order by means of [guided] self-organization, self-regulation, and self-governance”. From today’s perspective, the guiding questions would have needed to address the notion of “collective intelligence” and the gap between its conceptual idea (as expressed above) and its practical realization (as proposed by the PKM concept and system to be developed) Such a task would, need to take note of the state of art of the interdisciplinary KM discipline and technologies, as well as the plights of knowledge workers in the context of career development and opportunity divides. The SVIDT allows for rationalizing the underlying design processes from the mere theoretical notion of “collective intelligence” up to what the current PKM solution provides This ad hoc perspective adds a further level of PKMS design validation, and one of transparency of the affordances offered—a vital prerequisite of any system’s acceptance. The many integrated KM tools and ideas allow for KM education in a transparent and coherent manner, including the rationale how and why some of the original methods had to be adjusted, extended, re-purposed, or merged
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